Roman Got Job, Faked Credentials

Police Investigate New Embezzlement Charges

KISSIMMEE — A Hispanic community activist landed his Kissimmee bank job with a phony reference letter on stationery from a New York bank that fired him.

Roman

Luis Roman, a community leader in Osceola from 1989 until earlier this year, is now under federal investigation for allegedly embezzling $50,000 to $70,000 from First Sterling Bank in Kissimmee.

Local law enforcement officials say Roman admitted in a letter he sent to the bank that he diverted the money.

Roman, 35, is serving a one-year sentence at the federal prison camp in Pensacola after pleading guilty to $172,000 in bank and wire fraud last year from Banca Serfin of New York.

Banca Serfin officials said they fired Roman in 1988 for poor job performance.

Later they discovered the missing funds that led to Roman's guilty plea, said vice president Ronald Kern.

Yet Roman - who knew he was under investigation as early as 1990 - was able to land a job at First Sterling Bank in 1989 with a glowing recommendation on Banca Serfin stationery from Kern.

Kern said he did not even know Roman, who worked in a different section of the New York bank from 1986 to 1988.

Kern and other Banca Serfin officials said they only discovered the bogus recommendation when it was faxed to them earlier this month by First Sterling officials.

''We had no idea where he was or what he was doing until just now,'' said Banca Serfin comptroller Ricardo Colon.

Roman appeared on the Osceola scene just as the Hispanic community was trying to find its economic and political voice. Between the 1980 and 1990 census, Osceola County's Hispanic population increased 1,082 percent, the largest increase of any community in the United States.

Roman founded two politically active groups: The Osceola County Hispanic American Association and BRAVO, a spin-off agency that received several grants to help Spanish-speaking residents learn English.

Colon said he surprised to learn that Roman had become so active in community politics.

''When (Roman) lived here, he was just another grain of rice, no big deal,'' Colon said.

Several attempts to reach Roman by phone and mail have been unsuccessful.

First Sterling Bank President Dennis Essing declined to discuss his former customer service manager's references.

First Sterling officials told sheriff's investigators they had no idea Roman was taking bank funds because he was such a prominent and respected member of the community.

Essing also declined to release a copy of a letter Roman purportedly wrote to the bank shortly after he reported to the Pensacola prison camp.

According to the Osceola Sheriff's Office, Roman admitted in the letter that he embezzled $50,000 to $70,000 from First Sterling.

The letter was turned over to the Sheriff's Office last week. Detectives, in turn, gave the letter, and other investigative files, to the FBI.

The FBI will not release the letter, or any other information, until there is an arrest, indictment or plea-agreement to announce, said FBI Agent Joe Judge.

But Michael Wells, a Lakeland accountant hired by First Sterling to audit the books, personally interviewed Roman at the prison on April 5.

Wells told sheriff's investigators that Roman told him he routinely would divert charges that should have been turned over to the bank's working capital accounts into one of several personal accounts he controlled.

Roman would ''waive'' the charges on the bank's computer and the customer and his bosses would be none the wiser for the missing funds, Wells told investigators.

Federal officials said Roman used a different insider's tack to lift the funds out of Banca Serfin.

Another $30,329 in Banca Serfin funds was electronically transferred into accounts Roman controlled outside New York, the documents show.

Banca Serfin officials said they discovered Roman's dummy accounts when they started to trace the missing funds and discovered they were being used to cover thousands of dollars of credit card purchases.